In Pokémon GO you can complete more free Raids this weekend. Niantic is giving away two passes per day after a bug in the game.
What you get this weekend: Normally, trainers in Pokémon GO receive one free Raid pass per day. With these passes, you can currently challenge the legendary trio of Entei, Suicune, and Raikou in Raids. You can also challenge other bosses, mainly from the Johto region, in their Shiny forms.
This weekend, however, you can go on double hunts. Niantic announced that trainers can collect a second free Raid pass on September 7th and 8th. Why?
That’s why you get extra passes
This is what happened: As Niantic announced via Twitter, they want to apologize for the Raid passes for “previous issues that affected trainers.”
This is likely related to issues with the current Raid bosses Suicune, Entei, and Raikou. When the legendary dog trio was introduced into Raids at the start of the “Johto Journey”, only Raikou appeared in its Shiny form at times.
Trainers looking for Shiny Suicune and Shiny Entei came up empty-handed. On reddit, this led to some discontent: “Many of us spent money on Raid passes hoping to encounter Shiny Entei or Suicune,” writes one user.
Timing causes difficulties: In theory, once you’ve used your first free Raid pass of the day, you can receive a second one. On reddit, players are mostly happy to receive any compensation for the issues.
However, the timing of the action is unfortunate for players outside of the time zone specified by Niantic: The time 1 PM PDT corresponds to 10 PM in Germany. Usually, no Raids occur this late. In many time zones, this makes it difficult to collect all free passes – a situation that is also not well-received on reddit: “Many players will miss the free passes,” comments one user. Trainers would wish for more consideration of local times.
How to get the passes: If you want all the passes, you need to time your Raids correctly. You can redeem the normal free pass on Saturday and turn the gym after 10 PM to get the second Saturday pass. Save that until the next day.
On Sunday, you can redeem the saved Saturday pass and then have the opportunity to collect the remaining passes.
Recently, fans have been very into Raids – especially due to Shiny Rayquaza:
